Dresden Files Rearead - Summer Knight Chapter 19

Photo by Bálint Szabó on Unsplash

As they try to find a way out of the store, Harry explains to Murphy that he thinks what they're dealing with is a mind fog, and roughly what it does. This is a nasty piece of spellwork, and what we know about how magic works, I think even at this point in the series, suggests that it's also a pretty substantial outlay of power. Presumably this kind of thing is easier with thaumaturgy, but at that point I think you'd have to get a circle up around an entire walmart supercenter, and that sounds both time consuming and impractical. He also says he's not sure, because he's never seen one before, since they're illegal. Murphy says he never mentioned anything about magical law, which is a bit puzzling if he actually told her the whole situation he's dealing with, since his own status as a former warlock is sort of central to why the White Council is treating him this way. 

Murphy tries the fire alarm, which doesn't work. Neither does trying to go out the back, indicating that whoever's behind this is not just trying to force Harry out an exit of their choosing, and likely means to kill or capture him right there in the Walmart. There's a little bit of discussion and banter here about Murphy's Colt 1911, how it's better in a magic-heavy environment than something newer, but Harry still thinks revolvers are more reliable. This gear comparison, people explaining the virtues of their loadout, criticizing other people's, happens a lot in Dresden Files, and either that's evidence that the series draws from a genre or medium I don't spend a lot of time with, or it's specific to Jim Butcher's work, because I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. Literarilly, it's a good tool - it gives the reader a picture of what resources everyone has ready to hand before they come into play, telegraphs that an action scene is coming up, can often tell us something about the nature of the setting or the particular threat they're up against, and establishes everyone involved in the conversation as equals who respect each other (most of the time - like when it happens in Blood Rites, it's actually partly about establishing that Kincaid has a lot more experience with this kind of fight than Harry or Murphy). Sometimes it also builds, introduces, or reinforces other aspects of the dynamic between the characters, but that's just the nature of dialogue. They retreat to the automotive section, decently far from the mist, and Harry uses the stolen salt shakers to put up a circle. He makes a protective charm for Murphy using some of her hair and a thread from his own shirt, string around her finger so she won't forget. I notice that a lot of Harry's best and most reliable magic is based on these little ingrained cultural ideas: follow your noise, flicum bicus, string around your finger so you won't forget, pocket full of sunshine. I'm curious if wizards from other cultures have similar results with different culturally significant images, ideas, and metaphors, or if this is specifically a Harry thing. He wraps his pentacle around his hand, preparing to use that for his own protection. Murphy is visibly kind of freaked out here, due primarily to her trauma at the hands of the Nightmare, although honestly this is the first time she's really seen Harry properly doing magic, and I think that might be kind of unsettling either way. She's pretty open with Harry about it when he asks, and when she expresses concern that she won't fully recover, he says that if she doesn't he'll make fun of her and...put aprons on her car? and call he a sissy girl in front of her coworker every day. This seems to calm her down. 

Harry drops the circle, and they step into the mist. Their protections hold, although Harry's takes some active upkeep, and they head for the garden center. Why they chose this over an exit that would take them more directly out of the store I genuinely have no idea. It's possible they just got turned around in the low visibility, but I kind of thought Harry had a better sense of direction than that. They stop briefly so Harry can help an old man sit down, because Harry has an affinity for old people and we have to be reminded about this every couple of books. They've just made it through to the garden center when a woman whom they mistook for an employee caught by the fog reveals herself to be the Tigress and attacks Harry with a pair of gardening shears. This causes Harry to fall and hit his head on the floor, "complete with a burst of phantom light", bringing this book's concussion count to 2. When we get closer to the wrap-up post for this one, I'm gonna do a quick reread of the first two books and count the head injuries there too so I can make a graph. When this doesn't immediately kill him, the Tigress pulls a gun, but Murphy gets her in a grapple and either breaks or dislocates her wrist, causing her to drop the gun. This is mildly interesting inasmuch as it suggests that while they're considerably stronger than humans, ghouls don't have much sturdier connective tissue than we do. If I remember correctly, they do have some pretty serious accelerated healing, so they may just rely on that to compensate for being strong enough to pull their own skeletons apart. Or maybe there's a magic thing related to their transformation abilities that protects their joints and tendons from being damaged by their own movements, but not by external forces. Murphy tries to arrest the Tigress, whom she likely doesn't realize is anything other than a hostile human, but the ghoul changes shape and Murphy panics and freezes. Unfortunately the Tigress decides to tease Murphy a little before going in for the kill, which is frankly surprising behavior in a contact killer, giving Murphy time to recover and empty an entire clip into the Tigress. As an aside, Harry confidently asserts that bullets rip through a human body "like lead weights through cheesecloth", and I find that a little puzzling because most of the cheesecloth I've personally interacted with has been pretty sturdy for how thin it is. Maybe if you, I don't know, dropped a lead weight on a taught piece of cheesecloth from high up it would go through, but that isn't specified, so I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be picturing here. Jim Butcher is just not at the top of his descriptive game these last couple of chapters. 

Photo by Me

Murphy reloads and seems to be considering putting a whole second clip into the Tigress since the first one failed to kill her, but Grum the Ogre, armed with a hoe and a gardening shovel, interrupts them. Harry taunts Grum and tries to lead in further into the garden center, away from Murphy. This is when he tries the thing with the marbles, which doesn't work at all because Grum simply crushes them. Murphy, meanwhile, has new problems of her own, because someone is covering the exit with a rifle. Exactly which exit, at this point I'm honestly not sure - maybe back from the garden center into the main body of the store? Again, Butcher isn't doing his best description here. Harry gets out into the open air area where they sell baby trees and thing, getting a substantial lead on Grum in the process, but Grum has twisted the latch out of shape so it can't be opened. He asks why Grum is doing this, but Grum just does this "guess you'll die not knowing" bit. Escaping into the Nevernever is a dubious option at best (I certainly wouldn't want to visit whatever's across the Veil from a Walmart garden center on a summer night, although Harry is more concerned about time distortion), so he forms the notion of piling stuff up to get over the fence. I have serious questions about how quickly he can really do this when Grum is "several yards away", but sure. He tells Murphy he thinks he has a way out, and to get herself to safety if she can, but she refuses to leave without him. He's just starting to actually climb the fence when the saplings and mulch he piled up physically grab him, as they start coming together into the chlorofiend. 

I never have as much to say as I'd like about these action-heavy chapters. Maybe if I can find anyone, I'll try to get a guest blogger to come in and talk about what works and doesn't about the way Butcher writes fight scenes, because it's honestly a little out of my wheelhouse. As always, I'm gonna try to be faster going forward, but I still can't give this blog the kind of time it really deserves and still make enough money to eat and live indoors. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!  

Potato Soup For People Who Can't Be Trusted With Perishable Ingredients (Or The Stove)

Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash

 I was hoping you get you some more Dresden Files before doing another recipe post, but honestly this one is too good not to share. Also apparently my last recipe post was more than a year ago, so that makes me feel a little better. Technically, the title on this one may be a little misleading - it contains somewhere between 2 and 5 perishable ingredients depending on how fancy you want to get, and how you define "perishable", but they're things I always have around and that usually get used fast enough to avoid problems. Your mileage may vary, depending largely on how many coffee drinkers with different needs you have in your house. The only absolutely non-optional perishable ingredient here is butter. The version of the recipe presented here is how I actually made it, possible variations, substitutions, and improvements are discussed below. I made this one in the big 10 cup rice cooker, and I'm uncertain about scaling it down enough for the 2 cup model, but it could probably be adjusted for a medium sized cooker. As with the previous recipe, all measurements were done by eye or with a 2 cup Pyrex. 

Ingredients

• Potato Flakes - 3 cups
• Chicken Broth (from cubes or a box) - 8 cups
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped up fine
• Dried chives - a couple tablespoons
• Dehydrated chopped onion - a couple tablespoons
• Black pepper
• Salted butter, chopped up - 4 tbsp (half a stick)
• Whole milk - 1/2 cup
• Heavy cream - 1/2 cup 
• Salt

Directions 

1. Measure out the potato flakes and put them in the rice cooker.
2. Put the first 2 chicken cubes in 2 cups of water, if you're using cubes, and put them in the microwave for two or three minutes. 
3. While that's going, start cutting up the onion
4. Remove the chicken broth from the microwave and finish dissolving the cubes
5. Pour the chicken broth into the rice cooker
6. Start the next 2 cups of broth
7. Plug in the rice cooker 
8. Finish cutting up the onion and add it to the rice cooker
9. Add the next 2 cups of broth to the rice cooker (you're at four now), and start the next 2
10. Cut the butter into 1tbsp slices
11. Cut each slice into rough squares
12. Put the butter into the rice cooker and stir
13. Add the next two cups of broth to the rice cooker (you're at six now), and start the next 2
14. Add the chives (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid) and stir
15. Add the dehydrated chopped onion (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid), and stir
16. Add the pepper (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid, and then a little more) and stir
17. Add the last two cups of broth
18. Add the milk
19. Add the heavy cream
20. Stir it up real good
21. Set the rice cooker to "cook"

Nothing here really needs to be cooked in the conventional sense. If "let it run until you can smell it from two rooms away" does not work for you, give it maybe 30-40 minutes. My rice cooker did not recognize itself as "done" at this point, but the soup was boiling a bit. Makes about 4 servings, if this is your lunch, more if you're using it as a side dish. I forgot to add any salt before cooking it, except what was already in the butter and the broth, so add salt to taste after serving. 

Possible modifications and substitutions

• If you don't have an onion, you could probably use half a bottle to a whole bottle of dehydrated chopped onion instead
• You could also make up some of the difference with onion powder, but I almost never use onion powder so I'm not sure how much you'd want
• If you're using broth from a box or a can, rather than cubes, you don't have to microwave it two cups at a time. Feel free to add it all at once after the potato flakes, but put the seasonings (chives, dehydrated onion, and pepper) in before the butter. 
• Doing everything while the cubes are in the microwave is the fastest way, but if you want to sit down while the broth is microwaving, you can do everything except the spices first, mostly take a break while you do the broth, and then add the spices at the end. 
• There are a lot of different ways you could get the amount milk-stuff this recipe calls for. A cup of half and half is a perfectly good substitute for the milk and heavy cream. A cup of milk (any kind, although higher fat content is better) and 4 extra tablespoons of butter (another half cup) would work. A bit more than half a cup of heavy cream, and an extra half cup of broth, or even water, would probably be fine. If you have absolutely no milk or cream of any kind, even powdered, use five additional tablespoons of butter and it will probably be basically okay. 
• You will probably be okay without the chives, but consider adding a little more onion to compensate. 
• Unsalted butter is fine, but if you're not deliberately being low sodium, you'll want to add a couple teaspoons of salt.  

Possible improvements

• It's hard to go wrong adding more milk to a potato dish of this kind. You could probably replace up to half the liquid volume with milk. 
• If you have access to fresh chives (from the store or a window box) that would probably be great. If you're confident in your foraging abilities, or have access to someone who is, feel free to give wild chives a shot (I intend to as soon as the ground isn't covered in ice and snow), but if I remember correctly they have at least one poisonous lookalike in my area, so please be careful and don't poison yourself. 
• My version does not use any garlic, because I don't generally have fresh garlic on hand and lately garlic powder upsets my stomach. This would probably be good with garlic. 
• You could definitely add a couple teaspoons of salt to the cooker, rather than doing it all at the end. 
• This would probably be great with bacon, tvp-based "bacon bits", or anything bacon-y that you happen to have on hand. 
• This would also probably be great with cheese. 
• I'm almost sure there's a productive way to add sour cream to this, but I've been struggling to work out exactly how. If you have an idea, please let me know in the comments. 

Unlike the rice cooker chicken and rice that I make a hard minimum of once a week, this was an experiment that just went really well. I tried making mashed potatoes in the rice cooker a few weeks ago, and they came out kind of soupy, so I thought maybe I'd just lean into that and see how it went. The next Dresden Files post is happening as quickly as I can get it to, I promise. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!  

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 18

Photo by me.

Harry calls Murphy from the nearest payphone, and asks if they can meet, somewhere public but quiet enough to talk. Since it's pretty late at night, they end up at the "generic cafe" inside a Walmart supercenter in Wrigleyville. As best I can tell, while there was a Walmart in this area until 2023, it was a neighborhood market, which is almost the opposite of a supercenter. Neighborhood markets are grocery stores, not department stores, and considerably smaller, 40k or 50k square feet compared to a supercenter's 180k. Neighborhood markets also sometimes have gas pumps, which are uncommon at Walmart discount stores, and rarer still at supercenters. Chicago has two supercenters, but they're both farther out. Also the parking lot for the one near Wrigley field was on the roof.  I'm also having some trouble with "generic cafe" - first of all, it's a very odd phrase to use, especially from an author who's normally very competent at scene setting, and second, I could have sworn it was a McDonalds. This matters, a little, because I started reading these books when I was 17, and hadn't set foot in Walmart above a dozen times in my life until my late 20s. The first time I saw a McDonalds inside a Walmart, likely in Delaware (it may have been Maryland's eastern shore), I actually said, out loud "Oh, like in the Dresden Files", much to the confusion of my housemates. So I can't think of any reason I would have imagined this if it weren't the case, but my audiobook and ebook both say "generic cafe". Is it possible they go to a Walmart McDonalds in a later book? I actually went to some effort to try to find a Walmart that still had a McDonalds in it, to take a picture for this post, before I reread the chapter, but the one in Delaware (probably) has either switched theirs for a Subway or is just hiding from me, and the supercenters closest to my house and my parents' house both have Subways as well. The picture up there is of my local Walmart discount store. 

Anyways, Murphy asks Harry what's going on, and he tells her the shape of the thing, including how upset he is and how hopeless it feels. She asks why he called her, and he says he needs help, and the only backup he has is too inexperienced, that the list of people he trusts is basically just Murphy. She asks if he'll tell her what's going on, and he says he will, but warns her that knowing some of it could put her in danger, although part of why he's willing to do it now is that dealing with this stuff without the full picture would also be dangerous. He also tells her that if she tries to bring SI directly into the conflict, it will go very badly for her and everyone else involved, because bringing the mortal authorities into a supernatural conflict is the nuclear option, which I believe is the first time this comes up. Murphy agrees to these terms, if not enthusiastically, and Harry reads her in, including telling her about the White Council. She's gratifyingly pissed off at the Council on Harry's behalf, and spends most of the rest of the chapter asking clarifying questions. This is also what I would charitably describe as an odd writing choice. Her questions about Harry's potential suspects tell us something about how she thinks, including the level of intellectual caution she brings to ruling anything in or out, and her advice to focus on why Reuel was killed, and why Harry was attacked, in order to try and pin down who was responsible, is a valid thing to include, but a lot of this is repeating information the reader already has, much of which we didn't get that long ago, in a book that's not nearly long enough to require the kind of "recap episodes" that, for example, Derin Edala uses. The only new information we get is that the ghoul who attacked Harry committed several armed robberies on her way to Chicago, at each of which someone was abducted and probably eaten, that she's probably a hired killer who operates under the name "the Tigress", and that Harry is likely going to have to ask Lea for help talking to Titania and the Mothers. Probably the most significant thing that happens here is that Harry says he doesn't think Mab did it, but he can't put his finger on why, and Murphy says it's because if she had, she would have hired a less capable investigator. This gives us the beginnings of a sense of how Harry and Murphy work together when they're actually working together, which is important since this is the first book where they really do that. Harry trusts Murphy to check his reasoning, and she's often quicker to see the...structural elements of why people do things than Harry is. It's very X-files, actually, except she doesn't routinely overreach into ascribing specific psychological motivations to Harry being wrong about things. 

Harry says they need to get going, and is on the point of asking Murphy to do something, when the lights go out and a spooky fog comes up. Harry, naturally, pick up the salt shakers. 

Sorry for the very short post. A great deal of this chapter really is reiterating old information in ways that don't tell us anything new about it. The next one will likely be longer, and at the very least include fewer Walmart facts. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!